The present invention relates generally to digital communications. More specifically, the invention relates to a system and method for pre-rotating a digital spread spectrum signal prior to transmission in order to improve receiver accuracy and recovery of the phase and frequency information by the receiver.
Many current communication systems use digital spread spectrum modulation or code divisional multiple access (CDMA) technology. Digital spread spectrum is a communication technique in which data is transmitted with a broadened band (spread spectrum) by modulating the data to be transmitted with a pseudo-noise signal. CDMA can transmit data without being affected by signal distortion or an interfering frequency in the transmission path.
Shown in FIG. 1 is a simplified CDMA communication system that involves a single communication channel of a given bandwidth which is mixed by a spreading code which repeats a predetermined pattern generated by a pseudo-noise (pn) sequence generator. A data signal is modulated with the pn sequence to produce digital spread spectrum signal. A carrier signal is modulated with the digital spread spectrum signal to establish a forward link and is then transmitted. A receiver demodulates the transmission to extract the digital spread spectrum signal. The same process is repeated to establish a reverse link.
During terrestrial communication, a transmitted signal is typically disturbed by reflections due to varying terrain and environmental conditions and man-made obstructions. Thus, a single transmitted signal produces a plurality of received signals with differing time delays at the receiver, an effect which is commonly known as multipath distortion. During multipath distortion, the signal from each different path arrives delayed at the receiver with a unique amplitude and carrier phase.
In the prior art, the error associated with multipath distortion is typically corrected at the receiver after the signal has been correlated with the matching pn sequence and the transmitted data has been reproduced. Thus, the correlation is completed with error incorporated in the signal. Similar multipath distortion affects the reverse link transmission.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a system that corrects a signal for errors encountered during transmission.
The present invention is a method and apparatus for reducing transmission errors by a base station when transmitting a communication signal. An RF communication signal is received at the base station and analyzed for errors. A correction signal is then generated based upon the analysis. Prior to transmission of the communication signal from the base station, the communication signal is corrected using the correction signal.